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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25118263">In the After</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/chanting_lotus/pseuds/chanting_lotus'>chanting_lotus</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>There is a Boy in the Woods [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Teen Wolf (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dark, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Feral Behavior, M/M, Sad Ending</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 08:41:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,841</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25118263</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/chanting_lotus/pseuds/chanting_lotus</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Scott comes to him, soon after. He says they didn’t find Stiles’ body. </p><p>Derek knows this.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>There is a Boy in the Woods [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1760419</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>53</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>In the After</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hi guys. This is the last installment of There's a Boy in the Woods series. I usually write my notes at the end, but I want to point out that I am not archiving the major warnings for this. Repeating, once more for those in the back: THE MAJOR WARNINGS ARE NOT ARCHIVED. </p><p>I did this because I felt like those warnings would spoil the story. I want you, as readers, to be prepared to encounter any major archive warning (death, violence, non-con, etc) in this story. I want you, as readers, to decide when you are ready to read this. Please don't read this if you aren't ready to feel sad or some type of way. </p><p>Thank you and enjoy.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The nogitsune had said that they could not stop him as he crumbled into ash. As he choked on his last breaths, wearing Stiles’ face. The pack did not understand what he meant then, did not understand the warning. </p><p>Derek drives Stiles home. Scott can’t look at him, but he doesn’t have the jeep. His car idles in front of the Stilinski residence. Stiles stares out the window, some blood crusted on his nostril.</p><p>He’s quiet. </p><p>There is no thank you when he gets out. There is no question, no manic worry, over what the dark spirit imparted on them. </p><p>In the silent, still moments of the after, Derek wonders how much Stiles knew. If he knew. It’s a cruel thought. </p><p>The pack understands what the fox meant at three that morning. Derek wakes to a call from Scott, Alpha-who-is-not-his. The Stilinski house, he says. He sounds frantic. Stiles. </p><p>The train station is not so far that Derek cannot get there before the firemen do. Before the flames go out. Scott is there, being held back by his first beta. Derek should help him—the child struggles against the strength of the Alpha. He is enraptured by the blaze.</p><p>He never saw what his house looked like, in the after. </p><p>It will take hours for the firemen to quell the flames. To determine who was inside. A solid bond in his chest tells him that Stiles was not. </p><p>Scott panics and cries in front of the flames. He cannot feel the bond. It is because he is Alpha-who-is-not-his, Alpha-who-is-not-Stiles’. Derek has always been Stiles’. Derek leaves the scene before anyone can ask him questions. </p><p>One family fire is a tragedy. Two is unheard of. They will look for connections, even with the time spaced between the burnings. Derek has always been a connection to the other that occurs in the town, the black tar, sticky evil that glues the foundation to the earth. </p><p>He finds Stiles in the ash decay of his ancestral home. He lays on the charred floorboards, staring through the ruined roof and out to the stars. The moonlight reflects off of him, providing him with an otherly glow. His eyes are already empty. </p><p>Derek walks close to him. There are no reassurances to be had here. </p><p>Eventually, Stiles sits up. He says nothing and the silence bothers Derek. Not because he is uncomfortable with quiet. When so many bonds break and burn away, you grow accustomed to the silence in your head. But because Stiles used to be bothered by it. </p><p>He reaches for Derek’s hand. Derek’s claws come out. He lets Stiles move his hand palm to skull, gripping the tender flesh and tiny divot from where tendons move from head to neck. </p><p>Betas aren’t taught how to take, Derek says. </p><p>Stiles opens his mouth, wetting his lips. They’re pale, and he should drink something. Derek’s mother always worried about dehydration. Just for a little while, Stiles asks. Just try. </p><p>Eyes meet his, the amber pleading. It moves like a living thing, like its own being. Derek has never been able to deny Stiles. </p><p>Playing pretend now would do no good. </p><p>No one told Derek that memories are like threads in a blanket. Why would they? He was a beta. </p><p>No one told him that you have to pull slowly, like you are unthreading a single piece. If you pull too hard, you take the whole cloth away. You leave the person shivering and bare, body exposed to the elements and mind naked.</p><p>No one told him. </p><p>--</p><p>Scott comes to him, soon after. He says they didn’t find Stiles’ body. </p><p>Derek knows this. </p><p>He asks if Derek knows where Stiles is. When Derek hesitates, Scott becomes belligerent. He demands to know, always demanding. Derek wonders how it would feel to have his tacky blood on his claws. A last lesson, Alpha to Alpha. </p><p>The nogitsune did something, Derek lies. If Scott were a better wolf, he would be able to tell. Derek has many tells, and it is a wonder to him, in the after, how his pack didn’t know about his lies. </p><p>Stiles doesn’t respond well to people, he says.</p><p>It is true. Derek was able to stay close in wolf form, as Stiles shambled around the husk of a house in the woods. As he grew ever more layers of ash and dirt on him, as he thinned and forgot. </p><p>Take me to him, Scott demands. </p><p>It’s an Alpha order, but Derek doesn’t have to follow. He slips into his wolf skin, something that Scott will never be able to do and pads along the forest floor. Scott keeps a few leagues back, until they are back at the house. </p><p>The rest of the pack has a hard time finding it. Stiles was the only one who could go to it like it was the Beacon of the town, like his feet knew the path better than the one he walked from school to home. </p><p>His feet know no path now. </p><p>Stiles is in the kitchen today. He has made a nest from Derek’s clothes, presses his face into the cotton. He has brought an orange into his nest, his face a mess of sticky and soot. </p><p>Scott creeps closer to him. Stiles doesn’t notice—he doesn’t notice much these days. He is busy licking the sweet nectar that spilled onto his wrists. It exposes how pale he is, when his tongue leaves strips of clean skin. </p><p>The Alpha-who-is-not-his is horrified. Derek can scent it. </p><p>Stiles, he says. His voice wavers. It does not get his friends attention. </p><p>Stiles is a jumble of vowels and consonants in a language long-dead in the boy’s mind. But the wood beneath him creaks. Maybe it will give out and Scott will fall through. </p><p>Maybe Derek won’t help him up. </p><p>Instead, the strange sound of the wood, the wood that Stiles knows the sounds of when he bears on it or Derek, it alerts him. </p><p>He looks up at Scott, bares his teeth. He makes no sound. </p><p>Derek is certain he has forgotten how. </p><p>When Scott gets close enough, Stiles lunges. If the Alpha had expected it, he could have stopped it. But he does not know this boy—this Stiles in the after, what this Stiles would do. </p><p>He gets a mouthful of strong, tanned skin. He rips at the skin like an animal, like a cornered dog who will give one last, bloody warning. There is blood dripping down his face when he pulls away, darting out of the house. </p><p>Scott does not follow. Derek does. </p><p>He chases after the new Stiles, nipping at the boy’s heels whenever he pauses too close to the tree line. The boy has forgotten how to run properly. He falls often, spends moments running on all fours. His hands cut up and bleed, dirt soaking up the free red greedily.</p><p>There is no reason to frighten the town goers more than the woods already have. Stiles collapses miles from the house, face now covered in soot, sticky and blood. </p><p>--</p><p>Lydia suggests Eichen. </p><p>Just a little time, Derek asks for. Just a chance. </p><p>He will not let her come near to them again, knowing she may take his boy. </p><p>--</p><p>Derek does try, does take the chance occasionally. He slips into his man skin while Stiles sleeps, pins him down and opens old scars. </p><p>His mind is blank, feeling and color always. Derek does not know how to give him back his cloth. Does not know how to recover what he took. </p><p>--</p><p>Spring rolls into summer. The air turns heavy and humid, and his boy begins to smell putrid. He will put his face in the streams for drink but does nothing about the dirt that collects on him. His nails are cracked and bloody. </p><p>The darkness under his eyes fade, but the amber has frozen. </p><p>Derek decides to force the issue, sliding up behind Stiles, so that he cannot see the human form. He grabs at his boy, lifts him toward the stream. </p><p>He struggles, quick breaths and teeth and claws. It is so lively that it reminds him of the boy he would fight with. The one he’d pin to the wall or hold by the throat. The one in the before.</p><p>They strip their clothes in the stream, Derek tossing them to the bank. Stiles does not calm, creating wounds that heal just a quick. </p><p>Derek feels his cock grow heavy with the fight. </p><p>The stream is ice cold, even in summer, and his boy shakes violently when he hauls them out. He still scrambles to get away, uncaring of his clothes, of his cold, of his nakedness. </p><p>Derek pushes him down onto the earth, the soft mud. It welcomes his boy. He opens him up as slowly as he can, with tongue and hand, holding Stiles by the neck to the ground. </p><p>It would be harder if Stiles could remember how to use his hands. </p><p>A whine is dragged out of his boy when Derek bottoms out, the first sound he has made in the after. He tries to rise, pathetically pushing his chest into Derek’s waiting claws. Derek shoves him back down, shoves into him, addicted to the sounds and twitches he could pull.</p><p>It had been so quiet. It was almost like having Stiles underneath him, instead of just his body.</p><p>When he finishes, Derek watches his spend spill out over his boy’s thighs. Stiles’ cock is soft where it hangs, and some white slips the length of it. </p><p>--</p><p>The next time Derek puts Stiles in the river, his boy climbs out on his own. He presents on his own. </p><p>Derek is less gentle this time. </p><p>There is red on his cock, red running down his boy’s thighs. There are teeth marks at Stiles’ shoulder, and pinpricks of blood at his hips. </p><p>His boy is hard, this time. </p><p>--</p><p>They didn’t always stay in the old house. Some nights were spent under the stars, in a cave, or in a forgotten camping site. The woods had been too dangerous for years for campers to stay. The town knows this. </p><p>He and his boy always returned to the house, though. </p><p>When winter rolls around, they shelter there. No one will find it in the wood. No one comes out to the wood. </p><p>He brings out the boxes he stores throughout the seasons each winter, they make nests and ration food. His man skin no longer frightens his boy. The effect is different, but no less apparent—the way he bends over himself, the scars across his body from their matings. The way his boy’s cock twitches the second his teeth scrape his nape. </p><p>When they are sated, he slips back into his wolf skin. He curls onto the dirty ground, ashen and ruined. </p><p>He tries to forget his name, his personhood. He forgets what the house is. What the house was in the before. </p><p>There is only a wolf and his boy and the wood, in the after.</p>
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